RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #10 (Magic Johnson)

[70sFan]

On my personal opinion of opportunities created for Magic/Steph, I slightly prefer Magic across longer primes ('82-'91 vs '13-'23), and both are in my top 4 ever (with Nash/LeBron). An order for 'average prime season opportunities created' would probably be 1. Magic, 2. Nash (highest peak, but not as consistent), 3. Steph, 4. LeBron. 5 I haven't thought on a lot, but I'd be looking at Harden at first glance.

I don't do an era adjustment here (sorry Oscar as the clearest era leader not listed above), in the same way I don't scale Gobert upwards due to higher rim protection impact in earlier eras.

Can I ask about the very brief explanation of the methodology for such a project? Also, how big of a sample of games do you consider reliable?

[OhayoKD]

On my personal opinion of opportunities created for Magic/Steph, I slightly prefer Magic across longer primes ('82-'91 vs '13-'23), and both are in my top 4 ever (with Nash/LeBron). An order for 'average prime season opportunities created' would probably be 1. Magic, 2. Nash (highest peak, but not as consistent), 3. Steph, 4. LeBron. 5 I haven't thought on a lot, but I'd be looking at Harden at first glance.

I don't do an era adjustment here (sorry Oscar as the clearest era leader not listed above), in the same way I don't scale Gobert upwards due to higher rim protection impact in earlier eras.

are these assessments factoring in the passer-ratings?

[trex_8063]

VOTE: Magic Johnson (copied from last thread, just changed alternate)

Magic [for me] is a borderline/fringe top 10(ish) peak ever. His playmaking/creation puts him in the running for GOAT distributor. While his turnover economy is notably below playmakers such as Chris Paul, it's been pretty well established how [relatively] cautious Paul is as a facilitator: he'll often play it safe on the high-risk/high-reward opportunities, hedging in favour of ball-control. While his resultant GOAT-tier turnover economy is, in some ways, a point in his favour (and I'll likely bring it up when it comes time that I want to argue in his corner), it's also been illustrated by some others in prior threads that the facilitators who consistently attack those high-risk/high-reward opportunities (e.g. Magic, Steve Nash) often produce as consequence some of the greatest offenses ever.

When Magic exits the league, we see some teammates adjust reasonably well (e.g. AC Green, Byron Scott), but a somewhat brutal "period of adjustment" for multiple other teammates (at least one whom NEVER recovers to his prior standard of efficiency):
- James Worthy's eFG% falls by 5% in '92 without Magic, with no relevant change in FTAr. THough this is somewhat of an injury year for him, he does not recover by any significant degree in '93 [healthy year]. Worthy had also had an outlier good turnover year in '91 with Magic, fwiw.
- Vlade Divac's eFG% drops by 6.6% in '92, while his FTAr also drops 8.5% (results in a 5.3% drop in his TS%, despite IMPROVING his FT-shooting by 6.5% in '92). Admittedly this is an injury year for him; however, things do not recover at all the following [healthy] year. Vlade also has the single-worst year of his career [excluding his 15-game final season] in terms of turnover economy in '92.
- Sam Perkins sees his eFG% drop by 4.8% (though an improvement in FTAr in '92 cushions the blow a little).
- Tony Smith sees his eFG% drop by 4.2%, with no relevant change in FTAr.


These things are especially hurtful, particularly when you're also losing Magic's scoring. Which, although obviously I can prove nothing, I firmly believe Magic could have scored >25ppg on good efficiency had he wanted to. But he had other valuable talents which were more impactful on offense, and was very unselfish.
His size made him an outstanding rebounder from the PG position, and I'm not sure if his defense is as weak as some critics contend (I believe someone brought up some arguments to this effect last thread). He did generate turnovers, and his defensive rebounding carries value. His size, while a hindrance [perhaps] in staying in front of smaller guards, is an asset in contesting outside shots or in having versatility to switch on to bigger opponents.

I also think Magic one of the game's better team leaders. His natural charisma and charming smile, combined with a fierce competitiveness, desire to win, and unselfish style of play, poise under pressure (at least by the mid-80s and beyond) made him an effective team leader.
THough I can no longer access the site, I recall his WOWYR being GOAT-tier, fwiw.

His biggest hindrance for me in terms of ranking him is his longevity, which is not great compared to most other greats in this region of an ATL. However, even there I have a little bit of a mental asterisk by his rank, acknowledging that some careless behaviour combined cruelly with some bad luck and public ignorance/fear regarding a new(ish) disease forced him out of the league while still in his prime.
I have no doubt that if he'd been allowed to play out his career, he'd be no lower than #5 on my ATL (and might be as high as #2 [or even #1b??]).


Alternate vote: Kobe Bryant
Nomination: Karl Malone

[eminence]

On my personal opinion of opportunities created for Magic/Steph, I slightly prefer Magic across longer primes ('82-'91 vs '13-'23), and both are in my top 4 ever (with Nash/LeBron). An order for 'average prime season opportunities created' would probably be 1. Magic, 2. Nash (highest peak, but not as consistent), 3. Steph, 4. LeBron. 5 I haven't thought on a lot, but I'd be looking at Harden at first glance.

I don't do an era adjustment here (sorry Oscar as the clearest era leader not listed above), in the same way I don't scale Gobert upwards due to higher rim protection impact in earlier eras.

Can I ask about the very brief explanation of the methodology for such a project? Also, how big of a sample of games do you consider reliable?

Ahh, don't get me wrong, I've never undertaken such a project (that's a big time investment). That was me giving a pure opinion/guestimate. Ben could give you a much better explanation of how he did it than I could.

I imagine it'd be in the same range as most NBA stats to stability ~30 games (representative, which can be a bit tricky for older players). Or at least, don't see any intrinsic reasons it wouldn't be.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Ben also has a metric called PlayVal that attempts to measure the overall value of the shots created in one's era, because as mentioned, not all creation is equal.

Magic Johnson had a 3-year Ps PlayVal above 1.5, 10x.

Bird peaked at 1.5 PlayVal one time in a 3-year stretch. Steph peaked at a 1.3 PlayVal.

Magic looks like an obvious outlier.

[lessthanjake]

it's supposed to be anyway. IIRC, O-load(# of shots partially) and relative 3pa/3-point efficiency are put in specifically to credit players for what they are generating indirectly iirc. You can think of adjusted creation as a volume estimate, and passer-rating as a ts equivalent

“Passer rating” is *not* like a TS equivalent to box creation’s volume estimate. Passer Rating is not attempting to measure the quality or efficiency of the “creation” that box creation is measuring. It is only attempting to measure the quality of *passes,* not the quality of overall opportunities created. So these are only really tangentially related metrics.

Uh...no:

I don’t understand what you think these pictures show. Passer Rating is basically just a box-score formula that is meant to fit with Ben Taylor’s personal evaluation of the quality of passes in a sample of games he watched. So it is objectively trying to estimate passing quality because that’s what the formula was made to mimic. That is not the same as estimating the quality of all the creation that Box Creation is measuring. Your analogy to it being the TS%-equivalent to Box Creation being volume was just objectively incorrect.

Just like Cheema's RAPM, this is not a black box, if you actually bothered to look things up, you wouldn't be saying outright falsehoods:

Notably, with Passer Rating, there’s a few extra reasons to be skeptical of it. One is that the underlying hand-counted stuff isn’t actually anything objective.

No. It is box-derived. And is thus as objective as any other box-prior.

I'm not sure you're understanding. The formula for passer rating is based on box stats. But the specific box variables used and the coefficients put on those variables were chosen in order to fit fairly well with one person's hand-counted assessment of the quality of passes in a sample of games. The box stats are not subjective, but the underlying hand-counted assessment of passing quality absolutely is subjective. And therefore the entire formula is rooted in a subjective exercise. If a different person assessed passing quality in the underlying sample, then the formula would likely end up significantly different (as it perhaps would as well if Ben himself had simply looked at a different underlying sample of games).

However it(and box-creation) has several advantages that make it more predictive/accurate when we test it against something like "ast:tov" for o-rating:

-> 3-point volume and efficiency curve your creation up allowing players like Steph to be credited for what they offer indirectly
-> The quality of what you're creating plays a factor(layup assist percentage is incorperated in passer-rating's formula_
-> Height plays a factor as taller players can hit a wider variety of angles
-> Offensive-load replaces less accurate usage-rate and is baked into both(players who are creating and shooting more generate more "gravity")

None of that is aimed at "hey who has the coolest passes!" It's aimed at "who is generating higher quality looks" and whether you dislike those priors or not, they test better than the alternatives.

They "test better than the alternatives" as against a subjective assessment! It’s a formula made to fit with Ben Taylor’s own subjective assessment! In any event, I’m not suggesting the measure is worse than something very basic like assist/turnover ratio. But it’s a loose estimate based on a formula derived to fit with one person’s subjective assessments in a mere sample of games. It’s not something we should take all that seriously. And it’s certainly not something we should pretend is meant to assess the quality of opportunities created in general, since it’s not even *attempting* to measure that. It is regressing to fit with an assessment of pass quality specifically.

Sidenote: You should also realize that the inclusion of layup assist percentage is not part of Passer Rating for Magic, since that data doesn't exist for back then. So the actual formula used for Magic and Steph is also meaningfully different.

Moreover, even if you want to say that is all bunk because it isn't directly extrapolated from winning, winning does not favor Steph because

Magic leads better playoff offenses

You confused this(very similar to the jordan 27-3 rabbit hole) by taking a longer stretch of time for Magic and comparing it to a shorter stretch for Steph, but with opponent adjustment, good or bad, Magic is generating better offenses than Steph even with KD joining. You argue this is worthwhile because you're filtering out "weak defenses", but even "weak defenses" like the 2016 thunder have made Steph's offenses suffer. In fact, that series is a great example of why you don't just chuck out what you don't like. The Thunder were not especially talented on that end, but they were physical, so the Warriors motion was getting **** up. You know how they adjusted? They slowed down and started playing more methodically and letting iggy take some of Steph's on-ball load. It's also a great example of why using scoring and gamescore and per to pretend help that doesn't actually play at the level you're eyeballing them at leads to dumb conclusions. Steph's cast was exceptionally talented in terms of passing, ball-handling, decision-making, and iq. Hell even the pre-kerr Warriors were strong in all those departments.

I don't have any idea why you're talking about me "taking a longer stretch of time for Magic and comparing it to a shorter stretch for Steph." I've already explained to you that my data simply included every single data point for their entire career, but that you could take out the 1996 data point for Magic and Steph would still be way ahead. Indeed, I've edited Magic’s non-1996 number into the post I made with the data on rORTG relative to opponents' defensive rating. If that 1996 number is not considered, then the timespan for Steph is 11 years and for Magic it is 12 years. So there's no meaningful difference. And you can feel free to try to take Magic's best 11-year span if you'd like, but it's not going to help him in any significant way. There is no way to slice this such that Magic looks as good as Steph in that measure.

And you very clearly haven't read the information I presented. You talk here about how I purportedly filtered out "weak defenses like the 2016 Thunder" and how the Warriors struggling against them shows why "that series is a great example of why you don't just chuck out what you don't like." But the data I provided included the series against the 2016 Thunder! You would know that if you'd actually looked at it. I provided a measure of how well their playoff offenses did against good playoff opponents—and the 2016 Thunder easily met the criteria I set forth for that.

Given this error from you and the fact that you inexplicably previously said I was taking an 8-year period for Steph, I’d advise you to actually read my posts before criticizing them (and certainly before criticizing them in a pretty rude/sarcastic manner). You obviously have no idea what I presented and are instinctively attacking it based on completely false assumptions about what I said.

Can't put it to help either, because selective contextualization aside(apparently 2022 draymond was going very hard in those regular season games without steph and the warriors being far more affected by injury/missed games isn't relevant), Magic won with a team that was worse without him than any of Steph's contenders have been.

As is customary, I’m going to ignore the vast swath of stuff before this that is literally just about LeBron James, who it is a waste of time to discuss at this point.

This idea that “Magic won with a team that was worse without him than any of Steph’s contenders have been” is silly. From 1979-1980 to 1990-1991, the Lakers went 64-45 in RS+playoff games without Magic Johnson (a 59% winning percentage). From 2014-2015 to 2022-2023 and excluding 2019-2020, the Warriors were 59-58 in RS+playoff games without Steph Curry (a 50% winning percentage). If you want to define 2020-2021 as not a “contender” (which is probably right) then it’d be 57-51 without Steph (53%). Your statement is simply incorrect.

And it’s also amusing that you’re trying to artificially limit the consideration set to only Steph’s “contenders” and then say Magic won more with teams that weren’t better. Magic spent a lot more years on teams good enough to contend! It helps a lot to come into the league on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s team! Steph actually unquestionably won a title a higher percentage of the years his team had a viable contender.

We have two approaches for rapm approximations for Magic's time. Personally I think the above might be more useful, but WOWYR also sees Magic mostly clearing the field(david robinson is competitive). You can also go by WOWY(concentrated or extended) and you can also go by partial RAPM. Regardless of approach, Magic is "top" or pushing for "tops" for an era.

That is an impact king. This is not:

The amount of data I’ve provided to show that Steph is the clear top player of the last decade (i.e. his prime) in impact metrics is staggering and inarguable, and you keep just spamming a career-wide sample.

In any event, what’s funny is you don’t really realize that, by your own previously-stated standards, Magic doesn’t look like the “impact king” in what Moonbeam provided. In the relevant 5-year spans of Magic’s prime, here’s how Magic ranks in Moonbeam’s RWOWY (in chronological order): 11th, 21st, 16th, 15th, 11th, 10th, 12th, and 3rd. Moonbeam provides some other variants (which I think actually helpfully demonstrate how different methodology can lead to pretty different results) and includes some charts based on the RWOWY-Ridge variant, and in that variant Magic ranks: 5th, 2nd, 5th, 5th, 5th, 5th, 6th, and 9th. Overall, of course, Magic looks great because if you look at the totality of his rankings over the course of his career, he seems to come out looking the best of anyone in his decade (…or maybe 2nd best to Paul Pressey actually, depending on which version of the metric you look at). But, using this data, and leaving aside that Paul Pressey actually kind of outdoes Magic in at least one version of the metric, Magic is once again an example of a guy who is an “impact king” for a decade because he looks best overall over the course of the decade, not because he’s actually #1 in all (or even necessarily any) of more narrow timeframes within that decade. On its face, this is not more impressive than Steph the last decade, and does not meet your unrealistic standard.

Also, the fact that you like Moonbeam’s charts is particularly interesting, when those charts are simply charts of players’ *league rankings* in the metric—something you’ve previously tried to argue was invalid to look at, for reasons that you never actually articulated.

[DraymondGold]

For someone who says “The main advantage of WOWY is that you can see what truly happens when a player is removed from a team.”, for someone who characterizes WOWY as the true measure of wholistic global impact

My characterization actually lines up rather well with the bit this was apparently intended as a response to:

I think real-world stuff is especially useful to compare outliers(2016, 2004, 2009 ect), or to examine why something is happening in the artifical-stuff(Duncan staggering minutes with Drob's bad replacements, Spurs not really affected by Manu's absence, ect), but on the flip-side, lineup-adjustment makes things less noisy and is useful for establishing a baseline over longer time-frames. FWIW, I do rank RS Steph's highs pretty highly, above the best years for players like Hakeem and Jordan. But the same is true for KG. So unless you are willing to make the case years like 2016 were on another level compared to KG's 2004 or 2003, we get into how they generally look(KG carries an overwhelming advantage in both of the extended rapm sets we have), how much of their value can be tied to situation(very strongly favors Garnett), and what they and their casts do in the playoffs(2004 beats out 2016 pretty handily on that both fronts imo).

Not sure how you read that(or what I have been posting and have directly linked you to) and came away with the impression I'm some WOWY junkie who only cares about net-rating/srs splits. My issue with WOWYR is sample size and the approach being extremely noisy. With internal box-scaling(edit: that's not true) and outlier curving...


We have two approaches for rapm approximations for Magic's time. Personally I think the above might be more useful, but WOWYR also sees Magic mostly clearing the field(david robinson is competitive). You can also go by WOWY(concentrated or extended) and you can also go by partial RAPM. Regardless of approach, Magic is "top" or pushing for "tops" for an era.

That is an impact king. This is not:



And then there are the resumes, the winning percentage, and the ring count. The king of the 80's "topples" Steph, democracy be damned.

Umm.... what?

Your evidence you provide Magic here in response to my comment is
-ignoring the WOWY stuff, which clearly favors Steph, despite using it as one of your central statistics in previous debates for Hakeem or LeBron over Jordan?
-providing WOWYR data that we have for Magic *that we don't have for Steph*
-citing a in-era ranking for WOWYR, when you previously argued it's inappropriate to look at league ranking when debating with lessthanjake
-citing Magic's partial single-season RAPM data... which doesn't actually clearly favor Magic over steph?
-citing a single RAPM metric for Steph.... which we don't have for Magic
-ignoring all the other all-in-one metrics that have Steph on top for his era?

...

There's plenty of arguments you can make for Magic. I'm not sure this was very compelling or addressed what I was saying in my last post.

[DraymondGold]

I may end up voting for Magic (largely for longevity reasons... Magic was better sooner, and although he was in a weaker era, he also played in an era where longevity overall was down so Magic's longevity relative to era looks a little better than Steph).

But since there's been so much discussion of Steph's playmaking, I thought I might bring back my old post from the Greatest Peaks project:

Scoring Peak: Magic vs Curry

Another day, another Curry debate Just bumping some of the previous arguments since they'll be relevant again this thread. In short: Curry >> Magic in scoring, Curry's not as far back in playmaking as Magic is in scoring, and Magic's not ahead of Curry defensively. And again, 17 Curry has the small advantage in (limited sample of) pure plus-minus stats, the clear advantage in the Box-plus minus stats, and the universal advantage in the postseason stats.

1. Scoring: Curry >> Magic
Quoting my conversation with 70sFan, let's look at their relative shooting percentages:

87 Magic
rTS% +6.4% (playoff +6.9%)
rFT% +8.5%
r3P% -9.6%

17 Curry:
rTS% +7.2% (playoff +11.8%)
rFT% +12.6%
r3P% +5.3 (with immense volume and difficulty advantage over league average)

87-89 Magic:
rTS% +7.4% (playoff +7.4)
rFT% +10.6%
r3P% -3.9%
Inflation Adjusted Pts/75: 21.8

15-17 Curry:
rTS% +10.1% (playoff +8.7 with playoff injury)
rFT% +14.7%
r3P% +8.2%
Inflation Adjusted Pts/75: 29.5

Over a 3 year sample, Curry beats Magic by: 3.5 rTS%, 4.1 rFT%, 12.1 r3P%, and 7.7 Pts/75 relative to their league, and these advantages remain in their peak playoff performances. Magic's a good shooter and a good scorer. But Curry's the GOAT shooter and an all-time scorer. Curry >> Magic in shooting and scoring, even relative to era.

And more relevant to this conversation, here's Playmaking: Magic vs Steph

2. Creation: Magic > Curry, but Curry closes much of the Gap

I think we have to ask ourselves: Why does Curry consistently create better shots for his teammates and improve his teammates' efficiency more than older LeBron, Harden, Jokic, Luka, Westbrook, and older Chris Paul, whether we're looking at a 1-year peak or a 5 Year prime? Where does this playmaking come from?
1 Year Peak: Curry +7.3% (1st in league) >> older LeBron +3.9% (2nd in league) > peak Westbrook +2.5% (3rd in league)
[Metric: teammates' shooting percentage improvement when a star is on court vs when they're off. Sample: among top players in 2017]
5 Year Peak: Curry +0.07 (1st in league) > Trae Young +0.06 (2nd in league) > Nikola Jokic +0.06 (3rd in league) > LeBron James +0.05 (4th in league)
[Metric: teammates' increased pts/shot when a star is on vs off, aided by tracking data. Sample: 2018-2022]

Curry's an all-star level passer, but it's clearly not passing. So that's where the culmination of all the little forms of creation come into play, where Curry is consistently all-time to GOAT level in these skills. He's an all-time guard screener, and is always near the top of the league in guards' Screening Assists. He's GOAT level in Secondary/Hockey Assists, averaging over 1 per game throughout his prime. He's GOAY-level off-ball creator and GOAT-level win gravity. Per manal tracking, he has multiple off-ball movement assists and gravity-dragging assists per game. This says nothing about the subtler cases where Curry's presence makes it harder for opponents to double, help on, or close out on Curry's teammates.

Per my film study earlier in this project: in the 2017 Finals, Curry drew the primary attention of at least 2 defenders on 62% of possessions where he was involved (34/55), and his teammates' points were made easier by this 89% of the time (34/38 points benefited from the attention Curry drew).
Per NBA Tracking Data: In the 2018 Finals, Curry received double teams 2000% more (that's two-thousand times more) than KD.
Additional Film Study here:

Spoiler:

KD pre-Curry goes until 1:45. Skip to 1:45 to see Curry's impact.
[url]

Watch on YouTube

[/url]

And remember: None of these examples are captured by the traditional box score, so people who just look at assist numbers or box-score only metrics are likely underrating Curry's playmaking. But they would show up in more advanced stats.

I think if people aren't considering Curry a possible top 5 playmaking offensive engine of all time, they're seriously underrating Curry. To be clear, I still have Magic as the superior playmaker, largely from his volume advantage as a playmaker. But Curry playmaking efficiency is seriously GOAT-level, and I think these advanced stats/film analysis support that the playmaking gap is smaller than the scoring gap.
Sources:

Spoiler:

1. 1-Year peak Teammate shot improvement: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-case-for-stephen-curry-mvp/
2. 5 Year Prime teammate shot quality improvement: https://synergysports.com/explaining-synergy-shot-quality/

Read on Twitter

3. My 2017 Finals film study: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100386706#p100386706
4. 2018 Finals Tracking Data: NBAlogix (paywall) / Clutchpoints
5. Curry vs LeBron efficiency stats are in source 1

Now we don't have these numbers for Magic, and league ranking isn't everything. But I think there's pretty compelling evidence that Steph was the most efficient playmaker in the league for a 1 year peak all the way through 5 year long-peak / short prime. And this type of league-leading playmaking is *exactly the kind of playmaking that box stats would miss*, since it comes from all the subtler forms of creation: Steph's game-breaking gravity and spacing, his GOAT-level off-ball movement, drawing defensive with and without the ball, his all-time level screening for guards, etc..

Even so, for those who have been citing Thinking Basketball statistics for playmaking (PlayVal, Box Creation, Passer Rating),
We can look at the sum of PlayVal + ScoreVal to get a box estimate of these players' total offensive impact. Luka, this gets to your quote earlier where you just cited PlayVal and didn't cite ScoreVal:

Ben also has a metric called PlayVal that attempts to measure the overall value of the shots created in one's era, because as mentioned, not all creation is equal.

Magic Johnson had a 3-year Ps PlayVal above 1.5, 10x.

Bird peaked at 1.5 PlayVal one time in a 3-year stretch. Steph peaked at a 1.3 PlayVal.

Magic looks like an obvious outlier.

1 year peak in PlayVal + ScoreVal:
1989 Magic: 3.9
2016 Steph: 5.2

3 year peak in PlayVal + ScoreVal (averaging per season):
1988–90 Magic: 3.7
2015–17 Steph: 4.2

5 year peak/prime in PlayVal + ScoreVal:
1987–91 Magic: 3.4
2015–19 Steph: 3.8 (same as 2014–18, 2016–20)

7 year prime in PlayVal + ScoreVal:
1985–91 Magic: +3.3
2015–21 Steph: +3.8

9 year prime in PlayVal + ScoreVal:
1983–91 Magic: +3
2013–21 Steph: +3.5

Full Career:
Magic: +2.6
Steph: +2.8

... so I'm not sure Magic has the clear advantage in the Thinking Basketball offensive box stats, at least in peak/prime. And that's without accounting for defense, where you do get mixed opinions (in my experience the analytical crowd tends to slightly prefer Steph, casual crowd tends to prefer Magic mainly for size, though this is just an informal impression of how people in Peaks projects/this project tend to talk).

Again there's still arguments for Magic, both offensively and overall career (and I may side with Magic due to his longevity relative to era). But it's statistically not clear Magic was the better player at all for peaks or for primes.

[Illinifan217]

Yes

[rk2023]

Ben also has a metric called PlayVal that attempts to measure the overall value of the shots created in one's era, because as mentioned, not all creation is equal.

Magic Johnson had a 3-year Ps PlayVal above 1.5, 10x.

Bird peaked at 1.5 PlayVal one time in a 3-year stretch. Steph peaked at a 1.3 PlayVal.

Magic looks like an obvious outlier.

Not relevant to this thread per-se, but how do James/Paul/Nash grade out at this threshold?

[ijspeelman]

Ben also has a metric called PlayVal that attempts to measure the overall value of the shots created in one's era, because as mentioned, not all creation is equal.

Magic Johnson had a 3-year Ps PlayVal above 1.5, 10x.

Bird peaked at 1.5 PlayVal one time in a 3-year stretch. Steph peaked at a 1.3 PlayVal.

Magic looks like an obvious outlier.

Not relevant to this thread per-se, but how do James/Paul/Nash grade out at this threshold?

[70sFan]

Offensively, I do like Magic's ability to exert control over a possession a little bit more than Curry's ability to break defenses with shooting gravity and think it has a bit more resiliency. There's been a few times where defenses have found little ways to chip away at Curry's value (not to the point where he still wasn't really **** good) in ways that I haven't perceived with Magic. Whether it was jamming him on cuts, top locking, or switching actions, I've seen stuff work against Curry. If someone could give me a comparable example where Magic was stopped from producing elite playoff offense before the 90s.

When the Lakers faced good teams in the early 1980s, their playoff offenses were not actually very good.

For instance, here’s the Lakers’s rORTG (compared to RS league average that year) where either the Lakers faced: (1) a 4+ SRS team, (2) a finalist, or (3) they lost the series:

Lakers Playoff rORTG vs. good teams

1980 vs. SuperSonics: +0.1
1980 vs. 76ers: +1.6
1981 vs. Rockets: -4.2
1982 vs. 76ers: +1.6
1983 vs. 76ers: -5.0
1984 vs. Celtics: +4.4
1985 vs. Celtics: +4.4
1986 vs. Rockets: +0.2
1987 vs. Celtics: +10.1
1988 vs. Pistons: +0.9
1989 vs. Suns: +5.8
1989 vs. Pistons: +5.3
1990 vs. Suns: +3.8
1991 vs. Blazers: +4.0
1991 vs. Bulls: -3.4
1996 vs. Rockets: -5.6

Career Avg: +1.5

Given some of these negative numbers, I don’t think it’d be correct to think teams couldn’t chip away at Magic’s value, particularly in the early 1980s, where the Lakers playoff offenses against good teams really just weren’t very good. Indeed, the 1983 Finals was basically a horror show from Magic. And even the best series in that time period (i.e. 1984 vs. Boston) actually arguably hinged on Magic having some really serious problems at a bunch of key points.

For reference, here’s comparable numbers for Steph’s Warriors for his entire career:

Warriors Playoff rORTG vs. good teams

2013 vs. Nuggets: +5.0
2013 vs. Spurs: -3.2
2014 vs. Clippers: +3.8
2015 vs. Cavaliers: +1.7
2016 vs. Thunder: +1.4
2016 vs. Cavaliers: +2.1
2017 vs. Jazz: +7.3
2017 vs. Spurs: +13.4
2017 vs. Cavaliers: +12.5
2018 vs. Rockets: +5.9
2018 vs. Cavaliers: +16.0
2019 vs. Rockets: +5.3
2019 vs. Blazers: +6.0
2019 vs. Raptors: -0.3
2022 vs. Grizzlies: -2.2
2022 vs. Celtics: -1.2
2023 vs. Lakers: -3.2

Career Avg: +4.14

Steph’s Warriors never had a series as bad offensively as the Lakers had vs. the 1983 76ers, vs. the 1981 Rockets, or vs. the 1991 Bulls (or against the 1996 Rockets, but I don’t really consider that in any meaningful way for Magic). And the Warriors were essentially always good offensively in the playoffs against good teams (in fact, the Warriors were often extremely good), except in the last few years and in 2013, when he’s had substantially less help than Magic had. So I’m not sure it makes sense to say that Steph “was stopped from producing elite playoff offense” more than Magic was.

I think it makes more sense to look at their teams offensive performances against actually good defensive teams - because, with all respect - dominating 2018 Cavs on offense is nothing to rave about.

If we take a look at their performances against teams with -2.0 rDRtg or better (first value is relative to opponent, second to league average):

Magic Johnson (games, ORtg, opp. DRtg, rDRtg, league average rDRtg, league average DRtg)

1980 vs Suns 5 110,9 102,2 8,7 5,6 105,3
1980 vs Sonics 5 105,4 101,2 4,2 0,1 105,3
1980 vs Sixers 6 106,9 101 5,9 1,6 105,3
1982 vs Suns 4 113,4 102,4 11 6,5 106,9
1982 vs Sixers 6 108,5 103,9 4,6 1,6 106,9
1983 vs Sixers 4 99,7 100,9 -1,2 -5 104,7
1984 vs Celtics 7 112 104,4 7,6 4,4 107,6
1988 vs Jazz 7 111,1 103,1 8 3,1 108
1988 vs Pistons 7 108,9 105,3 3,6 0,9 108
1989 vs Suns 4 113,6 105,7 7,9 5,8 107,8
1989 vs Pistons 4 113,1 104,7 8,4 5,3 107,8
1990 vs Rockets 4 115 103,4 11,6 6,9 108,1
1991 vs Rockets 3 110,5 103,9 6,6 2,6 107,9
1991 vs Blazers 6 111,9 104,3 7,6 4 107,9
1991 vs Bulls 5 104,5 105,2 -0,7 -3,4 107,9

Total: 77 109,6 103,5 6,2 2,6 107,1

Step Curry (games, ORtg, opp. DRtg, rDRtg, league average rDRtg, league average DRtg)

2013 vs Spurs 6 102,7 101,6 1,1 -3,2 105,9
2015 vs Grizzlies 6 107 102,2 4,8 1,4 105,6
2015 vs Rockets 5 110,7 103,4 7,3 5,1 105,6
2016 vs Cavaliers 7 108,5 104,5 4 2,1 106,4
2017 vs Jazz 4 116,1 105,3 10,8 7,3 108,8
2017 vs Spurs 4 122,2 103,5 18,7 13,4 108,8
2018 vs Rockets 7 114,5 106,1 8,4 5,9 108,6
2019 vs Raptors 6 110,1 107,1 3 -0,3 110,4
2022 vs Grizzlies 6 109,8 109 0,8 -2,2 112
2022 vs Mavs 5 123,9 109,4 14,5 11,9 112
2022 vs Celtics 6 110,8 106,9 3,9 -1,2 112

Total: 62 111,8 105,4 6,4 3,1 108,7

If we include only years when Kareem was no longer a star and non-Durant years (excluding 2013 as pre-prime):

1988-91 Magic: 40 110,8 104,4 6,4 2,9 107,9
2015+2019-23 Steph: 34 111,7 106,3 5.4 2,1 109,6

Either way, I don't see a huge advantage for either player, though it should be noted that KD years influenced Curry's sample significantly more than Kareem's years does with Magic sample.

[OhayoKD]

Ben also has a metric called PlayVal that attempts to measure the overall value of the shots created in one's era, because as mentioned, not all creation is equal.

Magic Johnson had a 3-year Ps PlayVal above 1.5, 10x.

Bird peaked at 1.5 PlayVal one time in a 3-year stretch. Steph peaked at a 1.3 PlayVal.

Magic looks like an obvious outlier.

Not relevant to this thread per-se, but how do James/Paul/Nash grade out at this threshold?

Doesn't playval only measure volume?

[jalengreen]

Another data point for Steph's playmaking is here https://synergysports.com/impacting-other-players-shot-quality/ .
Over the last year Synergy developed a shot quality model and they performed an RAPM-like analysis of who improves teammate shot quality (basically quantifying the impact of playmaking). Steph grades out at and near the top over all the seasons they tested.

Good content. While impressive, I think this also goes against the previously mentioned idea of Steph being the clear #1 shot quality improver of this era.

https://synergysports.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Image-2-xPoints-added-by-year.png

By my count, Harden ranks above Curry in four of six spans. Trae ranks above Curry in four of four spans since entering the league. Three of four for Luka. Three of six for LeBron. All of them have a higher average rank than Curry.

We don't know Magic's numbers for his era, obviously, but this certainly doesn't support the notion that Steph dominates his peers in the playmaking sphere. Just that he's right up there with them (which is pretty good, of course!).

[lessthanjake]

Offensively, I do like Magic's ability to exert control over a possession a little bit more than Curry's ability to break defenses with shooting gravity and think it has a bit more resiliency. There's been a few times where defenses have found little ways to chip away at Curry's value (not to the point where he still wasn't really **** good) in ways that I haven't perceived with Magic. Whether it was jamming him on cuts, top locking, or switching actions, I've seen stuff work against Curry. If someone could give me a comparable example where Magic was stopped from producing elite playoff offense before the 90s.

When the Lakers faced good teams in the early 1980s, their playoff offenses were not actually very good.

For instance, here’s the Lakers’s rORTG (compared to RS league average that year) where either the Lakers faced: (1) a 4+ SRS team, (2) a finalist, or (3) they lost the series:

Lakers Playoff rORTG vs. good teams

1980 vs. SuperSonics: +0.1
1980 vs. 76ers: +1.6
1981 vs. Rockets: -4.2
1982 vs. 76ers: +1.6
1983 vs. 76ers: -5.0
1984 vs. Celtics: +4.4
1985 vs. Celtics: +4.4
1986 vs. Rockets: +0.2
1987 vs. Celtics: +10.1
1988 vs. Pistons: +0.9
1989 vs. Suns: +5.8
1989 vs. Pistons: +5.3
1990 vs. Suns: +3.8
1991 vs. Blazers: +4.0
1991 vs. Bulls: -3.4
1996 vs. Rockets: -5.6

Career Avg: +1.5

Given some of these negative numbers, I don’t think it’d be correct to think teams couldn’t chip away at Magic’s value, particularly in the early 1980s, where the Lakers playoff offenses against good teams really just weren’t very good. Indeed, the 1983 Finals was basically a horror show from Magic. And even the best series in that time period (i.e. 1984 vs. Boston) actually arguably hinged on Magic having some really serious problems at a bunch of key points.

For reference, here’s comparable numbers for Steph’s Warriors for his entire career:

Warriors Playoff rORTG vs. good teams

2013 vs. Nuggets: +5.0
2013 vs. Spurs: -3.2
2014 vs. Clippers: +3.8
2015 vs. Cavaliers: +1.7
2016 vs. Thunder: +1.4
2016 vs. Cavaliers: +2.1
2017 vs. Jazz: +7.3
2017 vs. Spurs: +13.4
2017 vs. Cavaliers: +12.5
2018 vs. Rockets: +5.9
2018 vs. Cavaliers: +16.0
2019 vs. Rockets: +5.3
2019 vs. Blazers: +6.0
2019 vs. Raptors: -0.3
2022 vs. Grizzlies: -2.2
2022 vs. Celtics: -1.2
2023 vs. Lakers: -3.2

Career Avg: +4.14

Steph’s Warriors never had a series as bad offensively as the Lakers had vs. the 1983 76ers, vs. the 1981 Rockets, or vs. the 1991 Bulls (or against the 1996 Rockets, but I don’t really consider that in any meaningful way for Magic). And the Warriors were essentially always good offensively in the playoffs against good teams (in fact, the Warriors were often extremely good), except in the last few years and in 2013, when he’s had substantially less help than Magic had. So I’m not sure it makes sense to say that Steph “was stopped from producing elite playoff offense” more than Magic was.

I think it makes more sense to look at their teams offensive performances against actually good defensive teams - because, with all respect - dominating 2018 Cavs on offense is nothing to rave about.

If we take a look at their performances against teams with -2.0 rDRtg or better (first value is relative to opponent, second to league average):

Magic Johnson (games, ORtg, opp. DRtg, rDRtg, league average rDRtg, league average DRtg)

1980 vs Suns 5 110,9 102,2 8,7 5,6 105,3
1980 vs Sonics 5 105,4 101,2 4,2 0,1 105,3
1980 vs Sixers 6 106,9 101 5,9 1,6 105,3
1982 vs Suns 4 113,4 102,4 11 6,5 106,9
1982 vs Sixers 6 108,5 103,9 4,6 1,6 106,9
1983 vs Sixers 4 99,7 100,9 -1,2 -5 104,7
1984 vs Celtics 7 112 104,4 7,6 4,4 107,6
1988 vs Jazz 7 111,1 103,1 8 3,1 108
1988 vs Pistons 7 108,9 105,3 3,6 0,9 108
1989 vs Suns 4 113,6 105,7 7,9 5,8 107,8
1989 vs Pistons 4 113,1 104,7 8,4 5,3 107,8
1990 vs Rockets 4 115 103,4 11,6 6,9 108,1
1991 vs Rockets 3 110,5 103,9 6,6 2,6 107,9
1991 vs Blazers 6 111,9 104,3 7,6 4 107,9
1991 vs Bulls 5 104,5 105,2 -0,7 -3,4 107,9

Total: 77 109,6 103,5 6,2 2,6 107,1

Step Curry (games, ORtg, opp. DRtg, rDRtg, league average rDRtg, league average DRtg)

2013 vs Spurs 6 102,7 101,6 1,1 -3,2 105,9
2015 vs Grizzlies 6 107 102,2 4,8 1,4 105,6
2015 vs Rockets 5 110,7 103,4 7,3 5,1 105,6
2016 vs Cavaliers 7 108,5 104,5 4 2,1 106,4
2017 vs Jazz 4 116,1 105,3 10,8 7,3 108,8
2017 vs Spurs 4 122,2 103,5 18,7 13,4 108,8
2018 vs Rockets 7 114,5 106,1 8,4 5,9 108,6
2019 vs Raptors 6 110,1 107,1 3 -0,3 110,4
2022 vs Grizzlies 6 109,8 109 0,8 -2,2 112
2022 vs Mavs 5 123,9 109,4 14,5 11,9 112
2022 vs Celtics 6 110,8 106,9 3,9 -1,2 112

Total: 62 111,8 105,4 6,4 3,1 108,7

If we include only years when Kareem was no longer a star and non-Durant years (excluding 2013 as pre-prime):

1988-91 Magic: 40 110,8 104,4 6,4 2,9 107,9
2015+2019-23 Steph: 34 111,7 106,3 5.4 2,1 109,6

Either way, I don't see a huge advantage for either player, though it should be noted that KD years influenced Curry's sample significantly more than Kareem's years does with Magic sample.

Very strong disagree on it making more sense to look at what happens against “good defensive teams” as opposed to actually good teams. A team that is mediocre but has a good defensive rating is still not a difficult playoff opponent, and it’s not those playoff series’s that matter the most. Conversely, a really good team that doesn’t have a great defensive rating is still a difficult playoff opponent, and that series is one of the ones that matter the most. The series’ that matter the most are the ones against actually good opponents, and in those series’, Steph’s offenses have been better.

Anyways, as I read the data you listed, Steph still looks better in this (albeit slightly) until you artificially limit consideration to only a few series for both (which happens to take out the worst series for the Lakers, and take out the best ones for the Warriors). So it’s perhaps a moot point, since really Steph looks better here too unless we just narrow and narrow until we can find some way to say Magic looks better.

[LukaTheGOAT]

I may end up voting for Magic (largely for longevity reasons... Magic was better sooner, and although he was in a weaker era, he also played in an era where longevity overall was down so Magic's longevity relative to era looks a little better than Steph).

But since there's been so much discussion of Steph's playmaking, I thought I might bring back my old post from the Greatest Peaks project:

Scoring Peak: Magic vs Curry

Another day, another Curry debate Just bumping some of the previous arguments since they'll be relevant again this thread. In short: Curry >> Magic in scoring, Curry's not as far back in playmaking as Magic is in scoring, and Magic's not ahead of Curry defensively. And again, 17 Curry has the small advantage in (limited sample of) pure plus-minus stats, the clear advantage in the Box-plus minus stats, and the universal advantage in the postseason stats.

1. Scoring: Curry >> Magic
Quoting my conversation with 70sFan, let's look at their relative shooting percentages:

87 Magic
rTS% +6.4% (playoff +6.9%)
rFT% +8.5%
r3P% -9.6%

17 Curry:
rTS% +7.2% (playoff +11.8%)
rFT% +12.6%
r3P% +5.3 (with immense volume and difficulty advantage over league average)

87-89 Magic:
rTS% +7.4% (playoff +7.4)
rFT% +10.6%
r3P% -3.9%
Inflation Adjusted Pts/75: 21.8

15-17 Curry:
rTS% +10.1% (playoff +8.7 with playoff injury)
rFT% +14.7%
r3P% +8.2%
Inflation Adjusted Pts/75: 29.5

Over a 3 year sample, Curry beats Magic by: 3.5 rTS%, 4.1 rFT%, 12.1 r3P%, and 7.7 Pts/75 relative to their league, and these advantages remain in their peak playoff performances. Magic's a good shooter and a good scorer. But Curry's the GOAT shooter and an all-time scorer. Curry >> Magic in shooting and scoring, even relative to era.

And more relevant to this conversation, here's Playmaking: Magic vs Steph

2. Creation: Magic > Curry, but Curry closes much of the Gap

I think we have to ask ourselves: Why does Curry consistently create better shots for his teammates and improve his teammates' efficiency more than older LeBron, Harden, Jokic, Luka, Westbrook, and older Chris Paul, whether we're looking at a 1-year peak or a 5 Year prime? Where does this playmaking come from?
1 Year Peak: Curry +7.3% (1st in league) >> older LeBron +3.9% (2nd in league) > peak Westbrook +2.5% (3rd in league)
[Metric: teammates' shooting percentage improvement when a star is on court vs when they're off. Sample: among top players in 2017]
5 Year Peak: Curry +0.07 (1st in league) > Trae Young +0.06 (2nd in league) > Nikola Jokic +0.06 (3rd in league) > LeBron James +0.05 (4th in league)
[Metric: teammates' increased pts/shot when a star is on vs off, aided by tracking data. Sample: 2018-2022]

Curry's an all-star level passer, but it's clearly not passing. So that's where the culmination of all the little forms of creation come into play, where Curry is consistently all-time to GOAT level in these skills. He's an all-time guard screener, and is always near the top of the league in guards' Screening Assists. He's GOAT level in Secondary/Hockey Assists, averaging over 1 per game throughout his prime. He's GOAY-level off-ball creator and GOAT-level win gravity. Per manal tracking, he has multiple off-ball movement assists and gravity-dragging assists per game. This says nothing about the subtler cases where Curry's presence makes it harder for opponents to double, help on, or close out on Curry's teammates.

Per my film study earlier in this project: in the 2017 Finals, Curry drew the primary attention of at least 2 defenders on 62% of possessions where he was involved (34/55), and his teammates' points were made easier by this 89% of the time (34/38 points benefited from the attention Curry drew).
Per NBA Tracking Data: In the 2018 Finals, Curry received double teams 2000% more (that's two-thousand times more) than KD.
Additional Film Study here:

Spoiler:

KD pre-Curry goes until 1:45. Skip to 1:45 to see Curry's impact.
[url]

Watch on YouTube

[/url]

And remember: None of these examples are captured by the traditional box score, so people who just look at assist numbers or box-score only metrics are likely underrating Curry's playmaking. But they would show up in more advanced stats.

I think if people aren't considering Curry a possible top 5 playmaking offensive engine of all time, they're seriously underrating Curry. To be clear, I still have Magic as the superior playmaker, largely from his volume advantage as a playmaker. But Curry playmaking efficiency is seriously GOAT-level, and I think these advanced stats/film analysis support that the playmaking gap is smaller than the scoring gap.
Sources:

Spoiler:

1. 1-Year peak Teammate shot improvement: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-case-for-stephen-curry-mvp/
2. 5 Year Prime teammate shot quality improvement: https://synergysports.com/explaining-synergy-shot-quality/

Read on Twitter

3. My 2017 Finals film study: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100386706#p100386706
4. 2018 Finals Tracking Data: NBAlogix (paywall) / Clutchpoints
5. Curry vs LeBron efficiency stats are in source 1

Now we don't have these numbers for Magic, and league ranking isn't everything. But I think there's pretty compelling evidence that Steph was the most efficient playmaker in the league for a 1 year peak all the way through 5 year long-peak / short prime. And this type of league-leading playmaking is *exactly the kind of playmaking that box stats would miss*, since it comes from all the subtler forms of creation: Steph's game-breaking gravity and spacing, his GOAT-level off-ball movement, drawing defensive with and without the ball, his all-time level screening for guards, etc..

Even so, for those who have been citing Thinking Basketball statistics for playmaking (PlayVal, Box Creation, Passer Rating),
We can look at the sum of PlayVal + ScoreVal to get a box estimate of these players' total offensive impact. Luka, this gets to your quote earlier where you just cited PlayVal and didn't cite ScoreVal:

Ben also has a metric called PlayVal that attempts to measure the overall value of the shots created in one's era, because as mentioned, not all creation is equal.

Magic Johnson had a 3-year Ps PlayVal above 1.5, 10x.

Bird peaked at 1.5 PlayVal one time in a 3-year stretch. Steph peaked at a 1.3 PlayVal.

Magic looks like an obvious outlier.

1 year peak in PlayVal + ScoreVal:
1989 Magic: 3.9
2016 Steph: 5.2

3 year peak in PlayVal + ScoreVal (averaging per season):
1988–90 Magic: 3.7
2015–17 Steph: 4.2

5 year peak/prime in PlayVal + ScoreVal:
1987–91 Magic: 3.4
2015–19 Steph: 3.8 (same as 2014–18, 2016–20)

7 year prime in PlayVal + ScoreVal:
1985–91 Magic: +3.3
2015–21 Steph: +3.8

9 year prime in PlayVal + ScoreVal:
1983–91 Magic: +3
2013–21 Steph: +3.5

Full Career:
Magic: +2.6
Steph: +2.8

... so I'm not sure Magic has the clear advantage in the Thinking Basketball offensive box stats, at least in peak/prime. And that's without accounting for defense, where you do get mixed opinions (in my experience the analytical crowd tends to slightly prefer Steph, casual crowd tends to prefer Magic mainly for size, though this is just an informal impression of how people in Peaks projects/this project tend to talk).

Again there's still arguments for Magic, both offensively and overall career (and I may side with Magic due to his longevity relative to era). But it's statistically not clear Magic was the better player at all for peaks or for primes.

The whole point of my PlayVal post, was to add onto the discussion of Magic, Bird, and Curry playmaking. Someone even mentioned Steph's playmaking might have the same value as Magic's so I was simply adding on to the discussion. However if you want to measure their overall value by Backpicks, Magic still comes out looking clearly better in the PS.

1 year peak in BPM:

Magic- 8.5

Steph-8.7


3-year peak in BPM:

Magic-7.7

Steph-6.9


5-year peak in BPM

Magic-7.6

Steph-6.5

[LukaTheGOAT]

Not relevant to this thread per-se, but how do James/Paul/Nash grade out at this threshold?

Doesn't playval only measure volume?

No. I hope you haven't been commenting on metrics, that you don't know what they measure.

PlayVal: Playmaking value, an estimate of a player’s points per 100 impact from playmaking only.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Another data point for Steph's playmaking is here https://synergysports.com/impacting-other-players-shot-quality/ .
Over the last year Synergy developed a shot quality model and they performed an RAPM-like analysis of who improves teammate shot quality (basically quantifying the impact of playmaking). Steph grades out at and near the top over all the seasons they tested.

Good content. While impressive, I think this also goes against the previously mentioned idea of Steph being the clear #1 shot quality improver of this era.

https://synergysports.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Image-2-xPoints-added-by-year.png

By my count, Harden ranks above Curry in four of six spans. Trae ranks above Curry in four of four spans since entering the league. Three of four for Luka. Three of six for LeBron. All of them have a higher average rank than Curry.

We don't know Magic's numbers for his era, obviously, but this certainly doesn't support the notion that Steph dominates his peers in the playmaking sphere. Just that he's right up there with them (which is pretty good, of course!).

Also, this is tweet as of Nov. 2021, however it further illustrates similar sentiments.

Read on Twitter

[lessthanjake]

Another data point for Steph's playmaking is here https://synergysports.com/impacting-other-players-shot-quality/ .
Over the last year Synergy developed a shot quality model and they performed an RAPM-like analysis of who improves teammate shot quality (basically quantifying the impact of playmaking). Steph grades out at and near the top over all the seasons they tested.

Good content. While impressive, I think this also goes against the previously mentioned idea of Steph being the clear #1 shot quality improver of this era.

https://synergysports.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Image-2-xPoints-added-by-year.png

By my count, Harden ranks above Curry in four of six spans. Trae ranks above Curry in four of four spans since entering the league. Three of four for Luka. Three of six for LeBron. All of them have a higher average rank than Curry.

We don't know Magic's numbers for his era, obviously, but this certainly doesn't support the notion that Steph dominates his peers in the playmaking sphere. Just that he's right up there with them (which is pretty good, of course!).

So I think there’s a few things going on here:

1. The data I provided was over larger timespans (including analyzing from earlier years than this starts), rather than two-year snippets. Anything like this measured over shorter timespans is much more subject to statistical noise, so a guy can be the top of the heap overall without always being the highest in shorter timespans (indeed, that’s typically how this sort of data would go). I’ll note that in the data I looked at, Steph probably isn’t the very top of the league in the last couple years, and wasn’t a huge outlier in 2018-2019 either (though he was still great). So this is actually not entirely inconsistent with my analysis IMO, as much as it is just taking smaller snippets of time periods, which are subject to more randomness. And, of course, a couple of those timeframes include the 2019-2020 season that Steph barely played, so they’re even lower sample size for him and aren’t exactly comparable timespans to compare to other guys on.

2. The data I was looking at included playoff data too, not just regular season. And that could potentially have some pretty significant effects (for instance, on a guy like Harden).

3. I think this is based on a different measure of “shot quality.” I used pbpstats data on shot quality, and it doesn’t seem to line up with some of what is recited in the text of that article. That article says that, in the 2021-2022 season, Dwight Powell had a shot quality of 1.40 points per shot with Luka on and 1.33 with Luka off. The pbpstats numbers would have that as 1.25 vs. 1.21. Not sure quite how much these two measures differ (or which one is better), but it surely makes at least some difference.

[DraymondGold]

Another data point for Steph's playmaking is here https://synergysports.com/impacting-other-players-shot-quality/ .
Over the last year Synergy developed a shot quality model and they performed an RAPM-like analysis of who improves teammate shot quality (basically quantifying the impact of playmaking). Steph grades out at and near the top over all the seasons they tested.

Good content. While impressive, I think this also goes against the previously mentioned idea of Steph being the clear #1 shot quality improver of this era.

https://synergysports.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Image-2-xPoints-added-by-year.png

By my count, Harden ranks above Curry in four of six spans. Trae ranks above Curry in four of four spans since entering the league. Three of four for Luka. Three of six for LeBron. All of them have a higher average rank than Curry.

We don't know Magic's numbers for his era, obviously, but this certainly doesn't support the notion that Steph dominates his peers in the playmaking sphere. Just that he's right up there with them (which is pretty good, of course!).

Also, this is tweet as of Nov. 2021, however it further illustrates similar sentiments.

Read on Twitter

Not disagreeing with these points per se, but there's a few things to note about the Synergy Sports image: 1) it does not include 2015 or 2014, when may well have been Steph first in the league
3) it doesn't include how much a player was in first by when they were first, and
3)it doesn't include how close they were in 2nd or 3rd or 4th in years they weren't first.
Considering Steph looks the best in this metric in 5-year spans (over all the players you mentioned) in this metric, I would suspect some combination of these 3 factors is present here him up.

Re: Luka's point, this is a different metric, no? It's behind a paywall so I can't see how Steph ranks or what the inputs are (e.g. is it a box metric or a plus minus based metric? If it's a box metric, how does it compare to playVal or others?). If it is a box metric, I'm more inclined to weigh the plus minus / tracking based stuff like Synergy Sports slightly more.

Not against the idea that e.g. Nash is a better playmaker than Steph (or Magic for that matter). I was moreso arguing against the idea that Magic's clearly the better overall player or offensive player in his peak/prime, or that the playmaking gap for Magic is cleraly bigger than the scoring gap for Steph. There's plenty of offensive stats and overall stats that can be used to argue for Curry.